Chapter 465 — The War Against the Tide

Gao Yang voiced his thoughts, and Tyr immediately refuted them: "Not only on land. There was once a civilization that developed formidable ocean-going technology—their offshore autonomous platforms and seawater extraction plants even reached the edges of our territorial waters, and they built semi-permanent habitation domes in the sea. But they still died suddenly, all of them. A month before, they'd been negotiating with us over the development of undersea heat sources; a month later, when we sent representatives over, we found the entire dome abandoned and full of corpses..."

Gao Yang frowned: "And the cause was never determined either?"

"No. By the time the delegation discovered it, their dome had been abandoned for half a month, and much of the evidence had vanished. But we did find that their dome's shields had been shut down from the inside—they must have turned off their own defenses and then drowned."

Gao Yang gaped for a long while, and in the end could only get out a single word: "Bizarre..."

"Isn't it... utterly bizarre," Tyr said slowly, then suddenly seemed to recall something. "Oh, that reminds me... there was one season's civilization whose destruction seemed different from the others... their end was tied to an ancient race."

"An ancient race?"

"Dragons," Tyr said, a word that took Gao Yang by surprise. "That civilization was destroyed in a war in which dragons took part. It happened very, very long ago. Back then a land empire suddenly rose to power—they developed at breakneck speed, swiftly came to rule the entire continent, and even had some contact with us. But before we could get to know them better, war broke out."

"One side in that war was the land empire; the other was the dragons. These days dragons rarely appear on the continent—you people regard them as legendary creatures—but in that war of ancient times, the dragons came flying down from the north in a nearly sky-darkening horde. They were nothing like a race in hiding then; they took part in that war in the most literal sense...

"To this day we don't know which side started it, but the cause of the war seems to have been tied to faith, because in the early stages the dragons destroyed a great many of that land empire's temple complexes—targeted attacks.

"The fighting was ferocious. The two sides were almost evenly matched, and the dragons died in enormous numbers. Our observers couldn't even get too close to the war zone—both sides had killed until their eyes were red, and they attacked anything that wasn't their own.

"The war lasted ten years—such a long duration was another way it differed from a typical 'Black Pit' phenomenon, since the other civilizations that perished from the Black Pit were gone very quickly. In the end the dragons won a bitter victory, and that land empire, once at the height of its glory, was reduced to ashes.

"According to the scattered records our observers brought back, that land empire called the year the war broke out the 'Year of the Counter-Tide,' and so they also called that war the 'War Against the Tide.'"

"The War Against the Tide..." As Gao Yang listened to this grand, sweeping tale from ancient times, he couldn't shake a sense of unreality. This story was simply too distant from the present age, and yet Tyr was recounting it in such a measured way that an acute dissonance was hard to avoid; still, he trusted that Tyr wouldn't fabricate such a tale just for amusement. "It truly is different from the 'Black Pit' you described before."

"Exactly. It lasted a long time, the cause was clear, and we observed it ourselves—which is why we've never been able to determine whether the 'War of the Reverse Tide' all those years ago was a 'black trap phenomenon.' But one thing is certain: if the War of the Reverse Tide has some connection to the black trap, then the dragons must know something."

Gao Yang could not help but smile bitterly. "So you're telling me to go ask the dragons for intelligence?"

"What if an opportunity comes up?" Tyr flicked her tail. "And I'm only giving you a line of thinking—it's not as if I'm the one who has to come up with the plan."

Gao Yang: "..."

For that one instant, he genuinely felt like slapping this fish to death right there on the bank...